The Head of the White House Security Council traveled to Brazil on Monday in an attempt to order a peaceful transition between Bolsonaro and Lula da Silva, an unprecedented intrusion into Brazilian democracy.
While President Jair Bolsonaro maintains radio silence on his plans to accept or not accept the election result, in Washington D.C. nerves are growing over the decision that the Brazilian right-wing president will finally make.
This is why on Monday, in a surprise trip, Biden sent his most important adviser and Head of the National Security Council of the United States, Jake Sullivan, to Brazil to meet with Bolsonaro and Lula da Silva and ensure a “peaceful transition”.
It is unknown at the moment if he actually met with Bolsonaro or representatives of his government, but Lula da Silva’s social networks were filled with images of the meeting with Sullivan. “Today I received from the American security adviser, Jake Sullivan, an invitation from President Joe Biden to visit him at the White House,” said the leader of the São Paulo Forum on his official Twitter profile, adding that he is “excited” by the future appointment.
Lula da Silva assured that he intends to travel to the United States in December, before taking office as head of state of Brazil on January 1, but that “the internal situation” would not allow it.
Former Foreign Minister Celso Amorim, one of Lula da Silva’s most important advisers in the recent campaign, assured that the leftist candidate is “concerned” about Brazilian democracy. “Lula da Silva made a comparison, I don’t know if the words were exactly those, between Trumpism and Bolsonarism, and the need to strengthen democracy,” Amorim said, adding that Sullivan, for his part, highlighted during the meeting the importance of respecting the result of the elections in the country.
It is an unprecedented situation for such a high-level White House official to travel to a country to press a policy decision, at least in such an open manner. Months before the election, Fox News host Tucker Carlson revealed that Biden had sent CIA Director William Burns to meet with Bolsonaro alone.
According to the journalist from the conservative outlet, Burns warned Bolsonaro that if he did not accept the election result, they would impose “more sanctions on him than Russia and Iran combined,” a strange threat given that the elections were months away.
As published on the official White House website, Sullivan traveled to Brazil with the intention of meeting with Jair Bolsonaro, probably for another “tight” like the one Burns gave him in May. However, according to what he learned, the president preferred to be represented by his Secretary for Strategic Affairs, Admiral Flávio Rocha.
In addition, far from receiving them at the Presidential Palace, Rocha met with Sullivan and the rest of the members of the US delegation at the US embassy in Brasília.
Sources with knowledge of the meeting told La Derecha Diario that the meeting was short-lived and Bolsonaro’s secretary avoided talking about election-related issues, which left Biden’s bishop “very frustrated.”
With more than a month to go before the elections, everything indicates that Lula da Silva will take office in January, but Bolsonaro has not yet conceded defeat, while allegations of fraud continue to accumulate. According to the Superior Electoral Tribunal (TSE), the leftist Lula da Silva defeated President Jair Bolsonaro during the second round of the elections on October 30 with 50.8% of the vote.
But the difference was much smaller than thought, and the tiny difference opened the door for the irregularities registered in the voting to have determined the result. According to different research groups, both public and private, multiple anomalies were detected in the results.
The “Brazil Was Stolen” investigation showed that the model machines purchased during the PT governments, which are not auditable by the Ministry of Defense, registered impossible vote values, such as ballot boxes with 0 votes for Bolsonaro, or differences between results impossible to explain in homogeneous populations.
A subsequent investigation by the Armed Forces and the independent group Instituto Voto Legal (IVL) verified these irregularities, and assured that there were severe vulnerabilities in the October elections in the models of the electronic machines that were purchased prior to Bolsonaro’s administration.
The TSE is expected to officially certify Lula da Silva’s victory on December 12, so if Bolsonaro plans to grant the election, he must do so before that date.
With information from La Derecha Diario